Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  But to him — she could not help knowing this — his love for her had not been the blinding flash that awoke all his nature. He had loved before that, keen sensibilities had been his, the sensibilities that inspired his art and made it so extraordinarily vital. All his life a huge joy of life had inspired him; he had waved in the winds of human emotions, he brought to her a love which was new indeed, but one which was driven by an engine that drove other machines as well, his art, his joy of life, for instance. But all that she was, was this one thing; she had lain like a chrysalis hitherto, and the moth beautiful that came out with wings at first crumpled and quivering, but momentarily expanding in the sun, had till then lived in darkness, and the light it saw when it emerged from its cracked husk was the only light it had ever known. She did not compare the respective dimensions, so to speak, of the love of each of them for a moment — she believed that Evelyn loved her as completely as she loved him. But he loved other things as well; his art was a vital part of his life, while she had nothing but him. This was why, though he was so much more developed than she, she had spoken a sort of truth when she said he was undeveloped, for he did not love her to the exclusion of all else. She was not, and could not be, the only thing the world held for him.

  In the same way also his sorrow for Philip’s suffering was different from hers, for he, so it seemed to her, was sorry for Philip, as his nature would make it necessary for him to be sorry for anyone who had suffered great loss, for an artist who went blind, for a musician who went deaf, but had yet the other joys of life, with, in course of time, an increase in his other sensibilities as compensation to make his loss good. But she who had emerged from nothingness into the full blaze of this unconjectured noonday rated Philip’s loss at what her own would have been. All had been taken from him, he was left in the original outer darkness which can only be estimated by those who have seen light, and not by the purblind creatures that have never left it. Philip, what must Philip’s sufferings have been! Poor Philip, who was so kind, so likeable, so everything but loved by her. And it was she who had done this; she had brought a misery on him which she honestly gauged by the knowledge of what her misery would be if something happened which made Evelyn no longer love her.

  She had carried the skeleton of these thoughts with her to bed that night, and she woke early to find that, as in the dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision, they were beginning to knit themselves together, bone coming to his bone, and the flesh covering them. The pale dawn was beginning to peer into the windows, and the birds to tune up in broken chirrupings for the songs of the day. Had Philip woke like this, she wondered, during this hot August month that he, too, had spent in London? If so, what mitigation of his misery had he found? Not in his business, she could not believe that; surely he must have taken to work as another man, unhappy but less manly, takes to a drug that deadens the power of sense. Surely that must be the explanation of his tireless industry in the city all this month, when others now went for holiday to moor and mountain. Oh, poor Philip! She had brought all this on him, too; she could have made him happy, she felt sure of that, had not soft, irresistible love made that gracious task impossible for her.

  The room in spite of its open window was very hot, and she turned back the blanket quietly so as not to disturb Evelyn. He lay with his face turned towards her, in deep sleep, not dreamless, perhaps, because he smiled. Even in this wan morning light, when all vitality burns low, his face was radiant; no scruple, no pale doubt troubled his rest. He would wake to another day with the same welcome of “Good morning” for it as that with which he had said “Good night” to the last. His lips were closed, he breathed evenly and slowly through his nostrils, no sleep could have been more tranquil. It was just the sleep of a child tired with play, who would be recuperated on the morrow for another day of play.

  Then she rose very quietly, and, opening the door with precaution, went into the bath-room. She was afraid that the splash of the water might rouse him, and put her sponge underneath the tap so that the sound was muffled, for she had the same womanly tenderness with regard to breaking his sleep as she had towards Philip. All suffering was sacred; even a broken hour of rest was a thing to be avoided. Then with infinite care she tip-toed back into their bedroom and dressed, but before she left it she looked at him once more. No, she had not aroused him, and no play of sub-conscious cerebration told him that she had gone; he slept on with the same tranquil sleep.

  EIGHTEENTH

  LADY DOVER’S letter to Madge was most elastic as regarded the date of their visit and thoroughly cordial, for she never did things by halves, and the welcome that would be given to her and Evelyn if he could possibly spare time to visit so remote a place was sincerity itself. About accepting it, she had her own view quite clearly formed, but her own pride, her pride, too, in her husband, prevented her from giving the slightest inkling of it to him. For she saw clearly that this visit was proposed by Lady Dover with the definite purpose of showing an act of friendliness after her marriage; it was clearly made with intention, and in her heart of hearts Madge was intensely grateful. To hint this, however, to Evelyn was impossible. But his frank eagerness to go made it unnecessary for her to consider any more the diplomatic reason for doing so.

  “Oh, let’s go,” he said. “Surely Scotland is better than London. What is there here? Just a stuffy town, and Battersea Park, and nothing whatever to do.”

  Madge knew that her own feeling of being hurt at this was unreasonable. This solitude of London had been unutterably dear to her, but she knew her own feeling to be unreasonable, since she never doubted — and rightly — how dear it had been to him. And why should he not want to be externally amused — to shoot, to fish, to do all those things that he delighted in? And echo answered “Why?”

  It was at breakfast time that this letter arrived, and the bacon was undeniably less good than it would have been two days previously. Evelyn sniffed at it, and decided against it. But his sensitiveness to slightly passée bacon was sensitive to her feelings also.

  “One doesn’t want meat food in the summer,” he said. “Tea and marmalade — how delicious!”

  Madge handed him his tea.

  “You dear,” she said. “It is high, and it’s my fault; I thought it would be good just for to-day. But it isn’t. Oh, Evelyn, it was nice of you to pretend you didn’t want any. But you can’t act before me. I always know you. So give it up.”

  Evelyn gave a great shout of laughter.

  “Madge and marmalade,” he said. “That’s good enough for me. In fact, I would leave out the marmalade if required. Oh, Madge, why can’t you be serious and talk about this. By the way, I’ll paint another sketch of you called ‘Bad bacon’; the yearning face of the young wife. You are young, you know, and you are my wife. Don’t chatter so, it confuses me. Now Lady Dover, if you will be silent one moment, lives at Golspie.”

  “That’s where you are wrong,” said Madge. “You have to go to Golspie before you begin.”

  “I don’t want to begin. I want to get there. Don’t you?”

  Madge put on the woeful face that always introduced Ellesdee.

  “I don’t like the ticket man at King’s Cross,” she said. “I don’t think he is what he seems.”

  Evelyn had eaten by this time all the crust off a Hovis loaf.

  “More crust,” he said. “There isn’t any. Very good; marmalade in a spoon. But I won’t distend my — my vie intérieure with crumb. About the ticket man. You are wrong if we are generous to Lady Dover with regard to the length of our visit. Why mince matters? Can we afford it? I say ‘Yes.’ Board wages for our enormous establishment here. Tickets for ourselves, third class — I wish there was a fourth or fifth — and what’s the dem’d total, as Mr. Mantalini said. Besides these” — Evelyn waved his hand like a man commanding millions— “these are temporary economies. The pink and butter-coloured is going to visit these classic abodes in October, and if orders don’t pour in like our own leaky roof, I’ll eat all the gamboge
in my paintbox. I can’t say fairer. And as I don’t possess gamboge,” he added, “the bet finds no takers. I give you that information, for though I am poor, I am honest.”

  Evelyn proceeded to eat marmalade with a spoon.

  “It will be very chic, if you come to think of it,” he said. “Probably several ladies’ maids and valets will arrive with their respective owners by the same train. You, Madge, will flirt with one or two of the valets, and I with several of the ladies’ maids. The scene then is shifted to Golspie station. You squeeze the hands of the valets on the platform, and I gaze into the eyes of the ladies’ maids. The sumptuous motor has come for Lady Dover’s guests. We strive to subdue — quite ineffectually — our air of conscious superiority, and squeeze the hands of Dukes and Duchesses. Then they will know us in our true colours. Triumphal explosion of the motor-car. The valets and ladies’ maids are saved. Hurrah for the lower classes! Another cup of tea, please. Right up to the top. And the point is the fare to Golspie. Arrived there, we shall have no more food and drink to buy.”

  The reasoning was inevitable; given that domestic economy could manage it, there was no reason that could reasonably indicate King’s Road instead. Yet, even after the A.B.C. had added its voice to the overmastering argument, Madge hesitated. She could not quite see her husband among the surroundings that awaited her there. She had been there before, and knew. How would he and that particular milieu suit each other? All this was secondary to her original desire to go; her private, incommunicable feeling that such a visit would poser them — for she could not have been Lady Ellington’s daughter so long without that point of view having soaked into her — was paramount, but the other was there, and the complication in her mind was that though she wished, taking the reasons all round, to leave this hot house which still was intertwined with exquisite and undying memories, she could not see how Evelyn should wish to leave this, not having her own worldly reasons for going to Golspie, without a pang. But since the question of whether economy would allow had been decided in favour of going, there was certainly no more to be said, and, so she told herself, no more to be thought.

  But, since the logical conclusion is the one conclusion in the world that is absolutely without effect as regards results, she continued to think. For the ordinary mind is not in the least reasonable; it would cease to be reasonable the moment it was, and take its place among fixed stars and other unattainable objects. Logic, reason, are perhaps the most ineffective of human motives; they may be appealed to as a last resort; but if there is any impulse still alive, it, and not logic, will be seized on as a ground for action. Hence the divine uncertainty of human affairs. If the world was ruled by reason it would become duller than a week-old newspaper. But it is the fact that every human soul is so impredicable that lends the zest to existence. Finding out, in fact, not knowledge, is the spring that makes life fascinating. Whenever the element of certainty enters, it is the death’s head at the feast. Nobody cares for the feast any more. The champagne is flat.

  So to Golspie they went, and Evelyn’s prophecy as regards the journey was sufficiently fulfilled to make anybody believe that there must have been something in it. He, at any rate, before they arrived at even Inverness, was engaged in conversation with an agreeable female opposite, a conversation which was not, however, so engrossing but that he could observe with secret glee the fact that Madge was reading the Scotsman, provided for her by an equally agreeable young man, who sat opposite, and hoped that his cigarette would not be disagreeable. Then, luck was really on his side that day, important people stepped out of first-class carriages at Golspie, and, by the usages of this cruel world, these acquaintances so pleasantly begun were rudely interrupted. A cart waited for their travelling companions, and the swift motor received them and the strangers, before whom their own travelling acquaintances were but dust and ashes.

  It was, in fact, but a short week after Lady Ellington’s arrival at Glen Callan that her daughter and son-in-law got there, and though she would, as previously arranged, have gone on to her next house the day before their arrival, she put off her departure for two days in order to have the pleasure of seeing them. The party, in fact, was unaltered, and so was their way of life; Mr. Osborne’s flow of humour showed no signs of running dry, nor was the blank amazement with which Lord Ellington regarded him in the least abated. Mr. Dennison was getting steadily on towards the completion of his panorama of Sutherland, and Lady Dover found fresh lights and shadows on the purple heather every day.

  Lady Ellington had carefully considered what her exact attitude towards Madge and her husband should be, and had come to the most sensible conclusion about it. Since the world had made up its mind to welcome them, and to draw a wet sponge over the past, it was clear that unless she wished to make an exception of herself, and not do in Rome what Rome did, she must extend to them not merely the welcome of the world, but the welcome of a mother also. And it was decidedly the best plan to make this thorough; astonished as Madge might be, it was better to astonish her than the world, and neither in public nor in private should she hear one word of reproach nor an uncordial accent. Lady Ellington had no desire to see private talks with her daughter; in fact, she meant rather to avoid them; but her whole policy was to accept what had happened, and welcome Madge in the flesh with the same unreservedness as she had shown in the letter she had written her a week ago, urging her to accept Lady Dover’s invitation. She was determined, in fact (now that Lady Dover had shown the way), to make the best of it, and, instead of bitterly counting up (and mentally sending the bill in to Madge) all that would have been at her command, had not the speculation with regard to Madge’s marriage failed, to make the most of the assets that remained to her. And the more she thought of them, unattractive as they had seemed at first, the more they seemed to her to have a promising air. Philip was immensely wealthy, and Evelyn was poor, that was unfortunately undeniable; but Evelyn — regarding him as a property — had certainly prospects which Philip had not, and though nothing could quite make up, to her mind, for the loss of much tangible wealth, yet Evelyn with his brilliant gifts might easily be a rich man, while even now he was a much more rising figure socially than the other. People talked about him, admired his cleverness and charm, asked to be introduced to him. All these merits, it is true, she had not seen in those days at Pangbourne, when she looked upon him merely as an impossible young artist, but since that impossible young artist had become an inevitable son-in-law, it was wise to take him into account. So her welcome to both was going to be unreserved.

  They arrived, just as Lady Ellington had arrived, after the rest of the party had gone in to dinner, and their host and hostess came out into the hall as usual to meet them. Madge, it must be confessed, had gone through a bad quarter of an hour of anticipatory shyness as they got near; but this on arrival she found to have been a superfluous piece of self-inflicted discomfort, for Lady Dover was absolutely natural, and all that was required of her was that she should be natural too.

  “Ah, dear Madge,” she said, “how nice to see you and Mr. Dundas. And we have such a surprise for you; your mother is here still. We persuaded her to delay her departure a couple of days in order just to have a glimpse of you. We call her Lady Salmon, and are eating a fish she caught only this afternoon.”

  She turned to welcome her other guests, when Lady Ellington also followed her from the dining-room.

  “My dearest Madge,” she cried, kissing her, “this is too delightful. How well you are looking. But did you only wear this thin cloak for your drive; surely that was rash? How are you, dear Evelyn? This is nice. I could not help coming out of dinner to have a glimpse of you. You have brought no maid, Madge?”

  “Dear mother, I haven’t got one to bring.”

  “No? Evelyn, she must have a maid. But Parkins, of course, shall attend to you here. Now you must go and dress.”

  That her mother was still in the house had been absolutely a surprise to Madge, but her welcome fully endorsed the
cordiality of her letter. She had not seen her since that afternoon in July when she had come to Evelyn’s studio, and whatever had caused this complete and radical change she was grateful to it. It, too, bore its meaning as clearly stamped as did Lady Dover’s greeting; whatever had happened, had happened but the past was over.

  Everyone in the house, indeed taking the time from their hostess, welcomed them with a very special cordiality. Lady Dover, in her quiet, neat way, had dropped, casually enough, but letting the point of her observations be fully seen, little remarks to most members of her party on the very great pleasure she anticipated from the visit of the Dundases. They were both so charming, it was no wonder that everyone liked them. The meaning of this was explicit enough, and put without any hint of patronising, or, indeed, of doing a kindness; and though Lady Ellington had reflected that people followed Lady Dover’s lead just because she was ordinary and they were ordinary, it might be questioned whether she herself could have given the lead so gently, for it hardly appeared a lead at all, or so successfully, for everybody followed it. From the fragments of Lady Dover’s ordinary conversation already indicated, it may not unfairly be gathered that she perhaps lacked brilliance in her talk, and was not possessed of any particular intellectual distinction. But after all, the hardest art to practise is the art of living according to one’s tastes, a thing which she certainly succeeded admirably in doing, and the hardest medium to work in, more difficult by far than metal or marble or oils, is men and women. But her manipulation of them was masterly, and, to crown it, she did not seem to manipulate at all.